Is the newly reunified Germany--a country with no strong traditions of either democracy or freedom--a sleeping dragon? For Shlaes, an American Jew and a European correspondent for the Wall Street Journal , the answer is an uneasy no, although she perceives a deeply entrenched, often unacknowledged nationalism and a widespread sense of the kinship of German blood. In this impressionistic travelogue, she seeks out such ``odd groups'' as hip urban drifters, career soldiers, self-important Bavarians, aristocrats committed to politics or civic do-gooding, and disillusioned Silesians and Sudeten Germans whose families were forced to evacuate Eastern or Central Europe at the end of WW II. At a Jewish school in Berlin, she meets anxious Jews (many of them immigrants from the Soviet Union) surrounded by constant reminders of the Holocaust. Shlaes's meticulous reporting lends force to her telling observations. (Feb.)